Neither are the progressivists, in present-day America, revolutionaries or enemies of the order. Being "radical" or "progressive" they merely want to… - Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn

We must furthermore always bear in mind that equality presupposes the perpetual application of force; equality after all is an unnatural condition — it is just as unnatural as a completely straight line, a geometrical plain, a perfect circle, distilled water, etc. It needs the intervention of human agencies who have to curtail and to stem the natural growth and development sometimes in the most brutal and cynical way. Docteur Guillotin, Procrustes, the mythological Hellenic bandit, and the magistrate of Strasbourg who decided during the French Revolution to demolish the tower of the medieval cathedral because it was higher than the surrounding houses, belong all to the same category.

We witness in the eighteenth century the preparation of the French Revolution by individualism and the degeneration of the old "liberal" trends into economical liberalism of the deterministic Manchesterian pattern. Egalitarianism only appears in strongly collectivistic societies where strong exogenous powers try to shape persons into "individuals," deprived of their original character. The "individual" is merely the last indivisible unit of the "mass," and individualism the last, grotesque, and hopeless fight of depersonalized man within the ocean of collectivism to withstand the encroachment of the masses. Charles V had a personality but Gustave de Nerval, who promenaded a tamed lobster in the streets of Paris, was a mere individualist.

When then is liberalism correctly understood? Liberalism is not an exclusvely political term. It can be applied to a prison reform, to an economic order, to a theology. Within the political framework, the question is not (as in a democracy) “Who should rule?” but “How should rule be exercised?” The reply is “Regardless of who rules—a monarch, an elite, a majority, or a benevolent dictator—governments should be exercised in such a way that each citizen enjoys the greatest amount of personal liberty.” The limit of liberty is obviously the common good. But, admittedly, the common good (material as well as immaterial) is not easily defined, for it rests on value judgments. Its definition is therefore always somewhat arbitrary. Speed limits curtail freedom in the interests of the common good. Is there a watertight case for forty, forty-five, or fifty miles an hour? Certainly not. ... Freedom is thus the only postulate of liberalism—of genuine liberalism. If, therefore, democracy is liberal, the life, the whims, the interests of the minority will be just as respected as those of the majority. Yet surely not only a democracy, but a monarchy (absolute or otherwise) or an aristocratic (elitist) regime can be liberal. In fact, the affinity between democracy and liberalism is not at all greater than that between, say, monarchy and liberalism or a mixed government and liberalism. (People under the Austrian monarchy, which was not only symbolic but an effective mixed government, were not less free than those in Canada, to name only one example.)